A radio base station (RBS) for mobile communication can deploy antennas of various polarization. The use of different polarisations has previously been to achieve so-called polarization diversity, i.e. to minimize the risk of fading by sending and receiving the same information on the polarizations available. This method is thus deploying redundancy as a mean to accomplish the goal to minimize the risk of fading.
Today, this redundancy method is dispensed with, since it has been found more efficient to send and receive different information on the different respective polarizations available. To send and receive different information on the different respective polarizations available is for example deployed in MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) systems.
However, it has been observed that a radio channel in an urban environment mainly preserves those polarization directions which are essentially horizontal and vertical. The main reason for that is the geometry of the landscape, in an urban environment there are buildings having a vertical direction and a ground having a horizontal direction. Generally, this means that a vertically polarized wave will reflect in buildings but not in the ground and vice versa for a horizontally polarized wave. Hence, vertical will remain essentially vertical and horizontal will remain essentially horizontal during propagation in the urban environment channel.
For example, a user equipment (UE), having a first and second antenna designed for reception of incoming signals having a horizontal and vertical polarization, respectively, is used to receive a message sent on a horizontal and vertical polarization from an RBS in an urban environment. The UE has a certain rotational position, i.e. the antennas are positioned in a certain way in relation to the incoming horizontally and vertically polarized signals. This results in an angle between the polarization orientation of the first antenna and the polarization orientation of the horizontally polarized incoming signal, and another angle between the polarization orientation of the second antenna and the polarization orientation of the vertically polarized incoming signal. It is apparent that the observed antenna signals depend on the rotational position of the UE, where each antenna may receive signals originating from both of the incoming signals.
This presents a problem, since the information that is sent on the horizontal polarization not only is received by the first antenna of the UE, intended for horizontal polarization, but partly also is received by the second antenna of the UE, intended for vertical polarization. A corresponding problem is apparent for information that is sent on the vertical polarization. Generally, the polarizations need not be essentially horizontal and vertical, but may have any orientation, in the general case a first and a second polarization.
Therefore, the information that is sent on the first polarization and the information that is sent on the second polarization may become mixed up in the UE, and there is thus a need for separating the information that is sent on the first polarization and the information that is sent on the second polarization.